Various standards have been established for electrical connectors used to interconnect information equipment. The Universal Serial Bus (USB) and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 1394 standards are known as representative examples of such.
In order to add required functionality, these types of electrical connectors are configured to internally house an electronic component. For example, FIGS. 14(A)-(B) shows a type-A plug or electrical connector 500 that conforms to the USB standard (FIG. 8 of Unexamined Patent Application Publication JP2002-190412). The plug 500 internally houses an inductor (common mode choke coil) L20 in order to add a noise suppression effect to the plug 500.
As shown in FIG. 14(A), in the electrical connector 500, an inductor L10 is connected between a pair of signal contacts 521 and a pair of signal lines w1 of a cable W. As shown in FIG. 14(B), the inductor L10 is mounted on a small circuit board 550 and is inserted between the pair of signal contacts 521 and the pair of signal lines w1 via a pair of signal pins 551a, 551b provided at an end of the circuit board 550. Similarly, the inductor L20 is inserted via a pair of power supply pins 552a, 552b provided at either end of the circuit board 550 between a pair of power supply contacts 522 and a pair of power supply lines w2 of the cable W.
The inductor L10 connected between the signal contacts 521 and the signal lines w1 of the cable W and the inductor L20 connected between the power supply contacts 522 and the power supply lines w2 of the cable W are both mounted on the circuit board 550 and housed within a metal shell 530 of the electrical connector 500. Functioning as a shield, the metal shell 530 is connected to a shield layer S that covers the signal lines w1 and power supply lines w2 of the cable W. Except for a mating portion 510 at a front end of the metal shell 530, the metal shell 530 that houses the circuit board 550 is molded with an insulative resin 560.
An electrical connector that conforms to the USB standard or other standards must maintain compatibility, and therefore has a restriction in that the shape of the mating portion cannot be changed arbitrarily. Moreover, because the overall configuration, including the insulative housing, of such an electrical connector has a small size and low profile, there is the problem in that the usable space for accommodating an electronic component within the insulative housing is extremely small.
For example, in the electrical connector 500 previously described, the dimensions of the usable space for accommodating the circuit board 550 within the metal shell 530 do not exceed 10 mm in the vertical and horizontal directions, and the height is approximately 3 mm. In consideration of the fact that the circuit board 550 has a thickness of approximately 0.5 to 1 mm, electronic components capable of being mounted on the circuit board 500 and being positioned inside the metal shell 530 of the electrical connector 500 are limited to electronic components having a height of not more than 2 mm. Thus, the electronic components capable of being housed inside this small-size low-profile electrical connector were limited to surface mountable components such as chip-type components.
Depending on the usage conditions of an electrical connector that houses an electronic component, due to an inability to satisfy required specifications for chip-type electronic components or for other reasons, the electrical connector may, in some cases, be required to internally house a lead-type electronic component. However, with a small-size low-profile electrical connector such as the USB connector previously described, space is limited inside the insulative housing, and it is therefore difficult to position lead-type electronic components therein. Moreover, since lead-type electronic components come in a wider variety of sizes and shapes than chip-type components, there is also a problem in that the shape of the insulative housing must be changed for each lead-type electronic component.